Gems of War – Match 3 RPG is a mix between a match-3 game, a turn-based RPG, and a collectible card game. Use the match-3 board to power up the cards you collect and then cast their abilities to devastate your foes!

Gems of War – Match 3 is one of the more innovative match-3 games on the market. It's from the same team that made Puzzle Quest and it feels very similar in a lot of important ways. While the core of the game is similar to other match 3 games (you switch the position of two tiles to make a matching block of 3 or more tiles), your goals and progression through the game are very unique and require lots of strategy, patience, and persistence.

In Gems of War, the match-3 grid serves as a way to power up your units, not as your end goal. In each turn-based game, you and your opponent alternate switching two tiles on the match-3 grid to try to make the most matches possible. Most tiles that you remove from the board flow into your mana reserves, while skulls are converted directly into damage to your opponents' units. Once you've accumulated enough mana of the right colors, you can select your units on the side and unleash powerful spells that can devastate your opponents' troops, give you powerful status effects, or change the match-3 board in a big way.

While Gems of War has some limited multiplayer, every opponent you face is controlled by the AI. Even the game's PVP mode involves asynchronous battles where your opponent sets up their defenses well in advance. The rest of the modes feature PVE battles where you face foes in adventures, as part of challenges, or as part of your advancement grind.

Perhaps most importantly, Gems of War's freemium model won't punish you for playing the game to the extent that Candy Crush and its ilk will. You're able to grind Gems of War for hours every day without spending a dime. Alternately, if you just want to play for a few minutes every day while earning cards, you can do that, too.

Overall, Gems of War – Match 3 RPG is a very unique match-3 game that's definitely worth checking out. Even if you're not a fan of CCGs or RPGs, the unique gameplay mechanics make the decisions you make on the match-3 board very different from games like Candy Crush. Additionally, it's received many updates over its lifetime, meaning that there's more content now than ever before. If you like match-3 games at all, you should definitely check this one out.

Gems of War – Match 3 RPG has many years of content available. It's also not governed by a stamina system in the way that games like Candy Crush are. This means that it's easy to get overwhelmed by the numerous options or to burn yourself out grinding too hard in your first few days. Try not to do either. Simply take things slow, play a few levels at a time, and pace yourself. The most important thing is to unlock daily missions and challenges and get your hourly gold when you can, and you don't need to go crazy playing every game mode to do that.

As far as early unlocks go, the dragon armor and the celestial armor as fast as you can. These should be your first two unlocks with gems. After that, save your gems for events and the occasional unlock that you feel you need to boost your account.

When it comes to resources, be careful with how you spend blue orbs. Most experts suggest that you shouldn't spend these at all until you can use them to buy Zuul'Goth. Even then, blue orbs are very rare and not particularly helpful, so you should try to avoid using them if you can.

The card game part of Gems of War is a big part of the game that is responsible for your advancement as a player. As you complete objectives in Gears of War, you'll get both currency and card rewards that you can add to your team. Cards come in all sorts of rarities and can be upgraded several times, so you'll need to collect a lot of copies of a lot of cards before you assemble a perfect deck. As you might imagine, Gems of War sells card packs for real money, enabling you to skip the grind and get ahead if that's your thing. You're still privy to the whims of randomness, however, and you can spend a lot of cash on the game before you get what you want.

Luckily, Gems of War is fairly sane in how it handles freemium currency and player rewards. As long as you're content to not be a PVP god, the game is very fun and rewarding to play without spending a dime. Sure, you'll have to wait patiently for your next card pack, but it's still lots of fun to get your limited rewards once you've earned them. Best of all, you won't have anything to complain about when the meta shifts. Since you won't have spent any money, you won't have “wasted” any real cash on a unit that gets phased out of PVP after an update.

The PVP in Gems of War is actually fairly fun – at first. As you climb in the ranks and get more accustomed to how the game works, however, you'll find that each season quickly devolves into you fighting against the same set of units over and over again. The community wastes no time figuring out what the “best'” set of units and strategies on defense is, and since you don't want to lose in PVP, the majority of the playerbase will adopt the same strategies. The developers of Gems of War issue regular updates and patches that shake things up, but you'll find that PVP is just as much about having the current meta cards as it is tactics or strategy.

Just like other games with active social systems, try to join a friendly guild as soon as you can in Gems of War. Your guild mates will give you helpful advice and your guild will unlock many opportunities for big rewards. Don't worry about carrying your team here. Your goal should be to just get as many free resources as possible.

Are you a Gems of War – Match 3 RPG master? Did we miss any tips or tricks? What are the meta PVP teams right now? Let us know in the comments below!